Improvement in refining sugars



UNITED STATES OFFICE.

JAMES A. MORRELL, OF NEW YORK, N. Y., ASSIGNOR TO HIMSELF, JAMES H. WHEATLEY, L. P. WILLIAMS, AND GEORGE W. BAXTER, OF SAME PLACE.

IMPROVEMENT IN REFINING SUGARS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 118,875, dated September 12, 1871.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, JAMES A. MORRELL, of the city, county, and State of New York, have invented an Improved Process of Manufacturing, Grystallizing, and Refining Sugars.

The nature of my invention consists in pass ing currents of rarefied air, impregnated or surcharged with electricity, through the canejuice, liquor, sirup, molasses, or melada, from whichever the sugar is to be manufactured or refined, while undergoing evaporation.

In carrying out this process I employ an airpump, bellows, or other suitable device for accumulatin g and moving air, and a furnace or heater in which the air is to be heated and rarefied during its transit from the pump to the evaporatingvessel. The air is conveyed by means of a pipe or pipes, and in this pipe is arranged, in any suitable or preferred form, a combination of metals to form a battery, by means of which the air is impregnated or surcharged with electricity in passing over it. For this battery I employ, by preference a coil of copper and zinc wires, twisted together and extending through the tubes, with one end into the evaporating-vessel; but an ordinary battery arranged outside of the conveying-pipe and passing currents of electricity into the same may be used with equally good results. When an ordinary battery is used it must be illsulated in any suitable manner, and the poles of the battery, being the coil above described, convey the electricity into the evaporating-vessel. In using the coil without the common battery my theory is that the heated air being forced through the tubes in contact with the coil creates a friction, and thus produces electricity, essential to my process. The air thus impregnated with electricity passes into the bottom of the evaporating-vessel, bubbling up through the cane-juice or sirup, 850.; and it may be so highly heated as to cause the evaporation thereof without the use of additional heat, if found desirable.

By the use of the abovedescribed process I am enabled to separate not only all the crystallizable portion indicated as such by the polarimeter, but even more; whereas by the various processes now practiced the grape-sugar will retain about its own bulk of crystallizable sugar.

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

I11 the process of manufacturing sugar, the use of currents of rarefied air impregnated or surcharged with electricity, passed through the canejuice, liquor, sirup, molasses, or melada while undergoin g evaporation.

In testimony whereof I have signed my name to this specification in the presence of two subscribing witnesses.

JAS. A. MORRELL. Witnesses:

D. P. HOLLOWAY, W. G. GRANon. 

